Nina Simone

This Song: Beth Ditto (Rerun)

In this rerun from 2018, Beth Ditto, former lead singer of the band Gossip, talks about how Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” helped her grapple with complex feelings about her home state, Arkansas. She also talks about returning home after heartbreak and explores making her first record “Fake Sugar.”

Every Thursday at 7pm CT, KUTX hosts a weekly Netflix Party featuring a different music documentary. Check it out here. Last week’s movie was What Happened, Miss Simone? and inspired the re-run of this episode discussing Simone’s music and its lasting resonance. Starting this week they’ll be watching the documentary series Hip-Hop Evolution.

This is the last episode of This Song for a while. In the meantime, check out our hip-hop podcast The Breaks and the Song Confessional podcast.

This Song: Beth Ditto

Beth Ditto, former lead singer of the band Gossip, released her first record “Fake Sugar” in 2017. The record is an exploration of commitment and heartbreak written in the midst of the breakup of her marriage and her band. Listen as Ditto explains how Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn” helped her grapple with her complex feelings about her home state of Arkansas after she had left for Olympia Washington. Then hear how returning to the place she grew up helped her heal during the time when her most important relationships were dissolving.

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Listen to Fake Sugar

Check out Beth Ditto’s Tour Dates

Listen to Songs from Episode 123 of This Song

This Song: Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater // Cross Record

Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg grew up listening to his parent’s classical music and white bread pop. Then he heard Vic Chesnutt. In this episode of “This Song” you can hear how Chesnutt’s “Big Huge Valley” helped him realize there was a whole world of music bubbling beneath the mainstream. Plus, he makes the case that Nina Simone is the “best popular musician of the 20th century, and maybe the 21st century too.”

Then Emily Cross of the KUTX Artist of the Month Cross Record describes the effect Imogen Heap’s“Hide and Seek” had on her while her partner, Dan Duszynski, explains how King Tubby expanded his ideas of what music could be.

Listen to Shearwater’s Studio 1A performance

Listen to Cross Record’s Studio 1A performance

Listen to Cross Record’s MyKUTX guest DJ set

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Listen to the songs featured in Episode 28 of “This Song”.

Jazz: Freedom and Liberty (7.5.15)

In this edition of Liner Notes, Rabbi and jazz historian Neil Blumofe, talks about the relationship between jazz and the idea of freedom in America.

He quotes how Duke Ellington describes jazz as, “a good barometer of freedom.” Ellington said, “In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.”

As we celebrate this nation and the freedom and liberty we enjoy, may we also contemplate the ways in which we still carry around chains, and operate within the prisons of past oppression. Knowing that true emancipation can only be obtained, through the most difficult of all forms of liberation, freeing ourselves from ourselves.

Nina Simone (3.2.14)

This is the body.